Religious Discourse

The paper analyzes the tricky phenomenon of religious feelings related to the question of authenticity. The challenge to describe and make sense of this elusive relationship, providing one exists at all, becomes clearer against the background of two important figures dealing with the psychology of religion-William James (primarily a psychologist) and Bernard Lonergan (primarily a theologian). While James was a naturalist psychologist who put his study on a background of human nature and followed academic scientific discipline, Lonergan was a Christian theologian who set the goal for his whole system not on the level of cognition but on the transcending dimension of being-in-love with God. They both avoided the extremes of their positions and reached out to a more balanced way of understanding religion in its complexity and sometimes ambiguous significance in the lives of human moral subjects.

Le discours religieux musulman est pris dans une fièvre idéologique depuis au moins deux siècles, réagissant avec une violence verbale aux évolutions sociales, ce qui atteste d'une crise culturelle profonde. La domination européenne a révélé la crise, mais elle n’en est pas la cause. Celle-ci est à rechercher dans l’histoire intellectuelle de la culture religieuse au cours de laquelle l’orthodoxie officielle avait interdit la philosophie comme activité intellectuelle autonome. Le rapport de l’islam à la philosophie est complexe, dans la mesure où 'ilm al kalam (l’étude de la parole de Dieu) est une philosophie religieuse ou théologie philosophique. C’est une riche construction intellectuelle qui a eu une influence structurante sur les représentations culturelles à travers lesquelles les croyants percevaient le monde et distinguaient le bien et le mal. Ces représentations sont encore actives dans la mémoire collective bien qu’elles subissent des changements à la suite des transformations sociales des deux derniers siècles. Elles donnent un sens à l’existence dans la mesure où elles enseignent ce qui est moral et ce qui ne l’est pas. Elles indiquent ce que doit être l’ordre symbolique en donnant à chacun le sentiment d’être en conformité avec la raison, la nature et Dieu. Auteur : Lahouari Addi.

In a social context of ethnic adversity wherein several identity dimensions are involved, the question of belonging reveals itself problematic. In American society, African Americans had been denied elementary constitutional rights and, thus, access to full American identity (Americanity) till the early 1960s. In such a conflictual situation, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., the pacifist Civil Rights direct action leader, settled the question of belonging to Americanity in a subtle manner in his “I Have a Dream” speech.
The present paper revisits the speech and speculates that in his aspiration to attain social and political equality King has recourse to cultural conformity as a strategy of identification so as to gain the recognition that is supposed to validate his belonging to Americanity.
Methodologically, the speech is explored through the lens of the Cultural Studies viewpoint in that the paper combines the interpretative commentary techniques pertaining to content analysis and the strategic sociological approach to identity stances involving ethnic belonging, in particular, and people dealing with two cultures, in general.

Joel Osteen is America's most popular televangelist and pastor of the country's largest congregation, Lakewood Church in Houston, TX. The 54-year old has been preaching since 1999, and his sermons air in over 200 U.S. markets and over 100 around the world. This study provides a brief introduction to the man and his ministry and reports the results of a self-selective survey (N = 403), employing analysis of variance and correlation analysis to examine relationship between viewer exposure to Osteen and perceptions of him and his message through five measurement scales. Key demographic variables are also considered for interaction effects.

“On Roman Religion” will add the perspectives of lived ancient religion and individual appropriation to the study of Roman religious institutions and ritual. Lived religion and the individual appropriations need not to be sought at the margins of orthodox religious practices, in the niches of civic religion. These phenomena are identifiable at the heart of rituals like praying, vowing, dedicating, and reading. This book confronts the very different, strategic, and  even subversive forms of individual appropriation with traditions, their normative claims, and their institutional protections. Thus the precarious state of institutions and traditions comes to the fore. These are as much means of expression and creativity for their inventors and patrons as spaces and material of experience and innovation for their users and clients. Lived ancient religion is as much about variations or even outright deviance as it is about the attempts and failures to establish or change rules and roles and to communicate them via public authorities or literary discourse. It is such roles and rules, the variations and their limits, the establishment and communication to oneself and others that constitute the material under consideration in “On Roman religion”: priesthoods, practices related to images or classified as magic, literary practices. Observations of contemporary authors like Propertius or Ovid or the author of the “Shepherd of Hermas” on religious experience are analyzed. These authors, in very different ways, reflect on individual appropriation of religion among their contemporaries, and they offer these reflections to their readership or audiences. Other chapters concentrate on the role of literary texts and inscriptions in informing practionners of rituals. The chronological arch is from the second century BCE to the second century CE. “On Roman Religion”offers a history of ancient religion that is not compartimentalized into a number of confessional histories.

Resumen
El presente estudio tiene como objetivo analizar las similitudes y diferencias que se evidencian en los discursos de Benedicto XVI y su sucesor, Francisco I en materia de homosexualidad, aborto y pederastia. Se utilizará la Teoría de la Valoración (TV) y el Análisis Crítico del Discurso (ACD) como soportes metodológicos y teóricos para el análisis de un corpus compuesto por cinco discursos, mensajes, cartas pastorales y entrevistas. Se tomará al episodio como unidad de análisis los cuales serán seleccionados de acuerdo a la controversia que han generado entre católicos, así también como en grupos de resistencia y no creyentes. A través del análisis se evidencia que el comportamiento discursivo de Francisco I, si bien en apariencia parece más laxo, aún contempla rasgos conservadores que no fomentan el dialogismo abiertamente.
Palabras clave: Iglesia Católica, discurso religioso, Teoría de la Valoración, Análisis Crítico del Discurso.

Abstract
The purpose of this study is to analyse the differences and similarities in the discourse of the former Pope Benedict XVI and his successor, Francis I, regarding homosexuality, abortion and pederasty. A corpus composed of 5 speeches, messages, pastoral letters and interviews will be examined by means of the Appraisal Theory and Critical Discourse Analysis. For the purpose of this study, episodes will be used as units of analysis. These will be selected according to the controversy they created amongst Catholics, non-Catholics and resistance groups. It was found that although Pope Francis I seems to have adopted a more lenient discursive behaviour, the underlying conservative features of the Catholic Church are still present and these do not foster full dialogical exchanges.
Keywords: Catholic Church, religious discourse, Appraisal Theory, Critical Discourse Analysis

This study investigated the discourse and stylistic features employed in Christian Religious Discourse for the projection of meanings and intentions. The data for the study were drawn from the three randomly selected Bible study outlines of Pastor W.F Kumuyi. To achieve its aim, the study drew insights from Searle‟s (1975) Speech Acts Theory and general stylistic analytic approach. Having analysed the data, it was found out that assertive, directive and commissive acts were the predominant acts employed by the pastor, while expressive and declarative acts were sparingly used or not used at all. Also, linguistic tools like phonological, grammatical, lexical and graphological features were utilized to facilitate the flow of the message and the organisational structures of the texts.

Resumo.- Numa perspectiva foucaultiana de explicitação da construção social da sexualidade, analisam-se os elementos da discursividade heteronormativa que se fazem presentes, ainda que subrepticiamente, no ritual matrimonial pós-conciliar da Igreja Católica, em suas dimensões litúrgica e doutrinária. Partindo de uma recensão diacrônica do discurso heteronormativo ocidental, em particular, de suas duas grandes fases históricas – religiosa e médico-psicológica –, apresentam-se os argumentos bíblico-teológicos que caracterizam a atual Doutrina Sexual e Matrimonial católica. Em seguida, situam-se os elementos litúrgicos e sociais do ritual matrimonial numa perspectiva de apropriação gradual dos elementos celebrativos teuto-germâncicos (cristianização) e de intromissão lenta, porém crescente, da igreja no contrato nupcial. Por fim, comenta-se a construção histórica do moderno Ritual Matrimonial e sua estruturação litúrgico-pastoral, bem como a relação entre liturgia e catequese moral, na qual as fórmulas rituais aparecem como signos da moral cristã, isto é, elementos de um discurso heteronormativo.
Palavras-chave.- heteronormatividade; Igreja Católica; matrimônio.

Resumen.- Desde una perspectiva foucaultiana de la explicitación de la construcción social de la sexualidad, se analizan los elementos de la discursividad heteronormativa que están presentes, aún que subrepticiamente, en el ritual matrimonial de la Iglesia católica postconciliar, en sus dimensiones litúrgica y doctrinal. A partir de una recensión diacrónica del discurso heteronormativo occidental, en particular, de sus dos grandes etapas históricas – religiosa y médico-psicológica – se presentan los argumentos bíblico-teológicos que caracterizan la actual Doctrina Sexual y Matrimonial católica. En seguida, se situan los elementos litúrgicos y sociales del rito matrimonial en una perspectiva de apropiación gradual de los elementos teutónico-germâncicos (cristianización) y de intromisión lenta, pero creciente, de la en el contrato nupcial. Finalmente, se comenta la construcción histórica del moderno Ritual Matrimonial y su estructuración litúrgico-pastoral, así como la relación entre liturgia y catequesis moral, en la que las fórmulas rituales aparecen como signos de la moral cristiana, esto es, elementos de un discurso heteronormativo.
Palabras clave.- heteronormatividad; Iglesia Católica; matrimonio.

Abstract.- In a Foucauldian perspective of explicitness of the social construction of sexuality, we analyze the elements of heteronormative discourse that are present, albeit surreptitiously, in the post-conciliar marriage ritual of the Catholic Church in its liturgical and doctrinal dimensions. From a diachronic recension of Western heteronormative discourse, particularly its two major historical phases - religious, medical and psychological - presents the biblical-theological arguments that characterize the current Sexual and Marital Catholic Doctrine. Then there are the social and liturgical elements of ritual marriage with a view to gradual appropriation of elements celebratory German-germâncicos (Christianization) and intrusion slow but growing church in the marriage contract. Finally, comments on the construction of modern historical Matrimonial Ritual and its structuring liturgical-pastoral as well as the relationship between liturgy and catechesis moral, in which the ritual formulas appear as signs of Christian morality, that is, elements of a heteronormative discourse .
Keywords.- heteronormativity; Catholic Church; matrimony.

The study analyzes some discourses of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG) in southern Mozambique and problematizes the dialogues of this church with aspects of different religious contexts and with political power. The theoretical inspiration lies in the authors who pointed out the political implications of various religious practices and witchcraft discourses in African contexts (P. Geschiere, H. G. West, and others) and in the authors who pointed out the difficulties to designate something as strictly political or strictly religious (T. Asad, and others). In this sense, the study did not start from a definition of religion, but seeks to identify the place that the religion occupied and occupies in Mozambique. In addition to the use of secondary sources, the study analyzes some of the written materials produced by UCKG in Mozambique, some television programs, some cults of the UCKG in Mozambique, and interviews with Mozambican religious leaders. Without ignoring the continuities in relation to the UCKG in Brazil, the study points out that several practices in other religious contexts, mainly "traditional" and Zionist in southern Africa, have created and created conditions for the UCKG’s speeches to be significant in southern Mozambique.

The current study aims at exploring the various social functions associated with employing bidialectal code-switching between Standard Arabic (SA), or the high code, and the Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (ECA), or the low code. In contrast with the domineering notion that both codes bear opposite social statuses, this study on the Egyptian religious discourse has proved that both codes demonstrate different functions within the Egyptian community. Increasingly, a number of Egyptian religious scholars have been implementing ECA variety in order to develop a diglossic religious discourse, which implies teaching people about the principles of Islam, in a more accessible manner that would appeal to Egyptians of diverse social and educational levels.

In this set of three powerful essays, the late world renowned scholar and philosopher, Ismail al Faruqi, ‎displays his formidable insight, vast knowledge, and unique trademark logic, brought to bear on ‎subjects still considered to be at the forefront of discourse on comparative religion. Al Faruqi delves ‎deep into the heart of the debate on the  metaphysical nature of values in the Western and Muslim ‎traditions, of the history of religions, and other issues, ultimately to guide readers to a clarity of ‎understanding and Islam's position in relation to them.  This will interest and stimulate many readers, ‎enlightened thinkers, modern secularists, philosophers and theologians, Muslim or otherwise - as al ‎Faruqi strives to arrive at an accurate assessment of the fundamentals of these important subjects, and ‎their significance for the human condition. ‎

The paper examines the use of the familiar (“the T form”) and the polite (“the V form”) personal pronouns in prayers, such as we find in the New Testament Greek and Hebrew/Aramaic text, in Jerome’s Vulgate and in several French translations, in the King James version and several other English version. The meaning of T/V alternation in this context is analyzed within the theoretical framework of Politeness theory (BROWN and LEVINSON, 1987; LEECH, 1983; MILLS, 2009. In addition, the spatial aspect of prayer (close/distant) is compared to the personal zones of Edward T. HALL’s “Proxemics” (The Hidden Dimension, 1966), belonging to our “body language” (A. PEASE, 1981). We argue that the use of the T pronoun in prayer corresponds to closeness to deity as desirable (Positive Face) and the V form to such a facework aiming at keeping distance from God as desirable, according to the formula Protect/Respect (Negative Face).

The article deals with the genre fundamentals of Christian religious discourse. Religious texts have been selected and analyzed. An attempt has been made to create the classification of biblical, church, religious-theoretical and religious-popular genres of Christian discourse. The results show that the genre paradigm of Christian religious discourse is an extremely colourful linguistic palette. Religious genres are a special means of the Divine knowledge of the Creator, of His essence, of the content of His Word, commandments and will.
Keywords: Bible, Christianity, church, religious text, genre variation.

The book Letters Across the Divide: Two Friends Explore Racism, Friendship, and Faith embodies a dialogic rhetoric with significant potential to influence its intended audience to accept the need for racial atonement and reconciliation. It exemplifies what Aaron Gresson calls a " dance of agency " in both its interpersonal exchanges and constructed relationship with readers. Bringing white and black voices, individual and collective concerns, and (inter)personal and public discourse into dialogue, Letters demonstrates the transformative power of " voice, " which mediates the " authenticity " of Buberian dialogic rhetoric and the cultural performances of Bakhtinian dialogism. The fact that the white coauthor boldly affirms commonplaces of white resistance increases the likelihood that white readers would identify with and be influenced by his profound attitudinal change in dialogue with his black friend. The coherence and credibility of that transformation depend upon the prefigural power of the authors' shared religious narrative—both enabling and constraining Letters' influence on public racial reconciliation.

Language plays a key role in religion, framing how people describe spiritual experience and giving structure to religious beliefs and practices. Bringing together work from a team of world-renowned scholars, this volume introduces contemporary research on religious discourse from a variety of theoretical and methodical perspectives. It introduces methods for analysis of a range of different kinds of text and talk, including institutional discourse within organised religions, discourse around spirituality and spiritual experience within religious communities, media discourse about the role of religion and spirituality in society, translations of sacred texts, political discourse, and ritual language. Engaging and easy to read, it is accessible to researchers across linguistics, religious studies, and other related disciplines. A comprehensive introduction to all the major research approaches to religious language, it will become a key resource in the emerging interdisciplinary field of language and religion.

Abstrak: Dalam novel Petals of Blood, A Grain of Wheat dan Weep Not, Child karya Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, tampak adanya keraguan terhadap nasionalisme yang diproblematisasi sebagai kerangka ideologis untuk membentuk masyarakat Kenya sebagai sebuah bangsa. Hal ini terlihat dari penyajian kebudayaan cetak sebagai ragam ekonomi kapitalistik (kapitalisme cetak), pengasingan sebagai pengenalan, wacana religius, dan keberagaman kepentingan masyarakat yang serupa dengan heteroglosia dalam novel. Penelitian ini dilakukan dengan tujuan mengetahui cara nasionalisme menjadi problematis sebagai wahana pembentukan sebuah bangsa—tidak hanya bagi masyarakat Kenya namun juga masyarakat bangsa-bangsa lainnya terlepas dari masa sebelum atau sesudah kemerdekaannya dicapai.

Abstract: In Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's novels Petals of Blood, A Grain of Wheat and Weep Not, Child, there appears to be doubts towards nationalism, which is problematized as an ideological framework in forming the Kenyan people as a nation. This is depicted through how the novels present print culture as a capitalistic economic variant (print-capitalism), alienation as a tool of recognition, religious discourses, and the varying interests of the society which is similar to heteroglossia in the novel. This research aims to see how nationalism becomes problematic as a mode of the formation of a nation—not only of the people of Kenya as in the novel but of other nations as well regardless of whether the nation is in the stage of having or not yet having gained its independence. PENDAHULUAN Novel Weep Not, Child (1964), A Grain of Wheat (1967) dan Petals of Blood (1977) karya Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o mengajukan kisah yang menunjukkan adanya keraguan terhadap nasionalisme dengan memproblematisasinya sebagai wahana pembentukan masyarakat Kenya menjadi sebuah bangsa atau 'komunitas'. Hal ini ditunjukkan dalam tiga latar waktu yang berbeda yakni, secara berurutan: i) sebelum kemerdekaan Kenya (Weep Not, Child); ii) menjelang kemerdekaan Kenya (A Grain of Wheat); dan ii) setelah kemerdekaan Kenya (Petals of Blood). Berdasarkan ketiga latar waktu tersebut, proses pembentukan masyarakat Kenya diiringi dengan keterlibatan kolonial oleh pihak Inggris dan, pada era pascakemerdekaan, masa penyesuaian oleh pemerintah baru atau posisi-posisi yang sebelumnya diduduki oleh pihak Inggris yang digantikan oleh masyarakat Kenya.

En este trabajo nos proponemos analizar las variaciones en el empleo del lexema “pueblo” durante el proceso de redacción del documento Iglesia y comunidad nacional (1981). Para ello nos detendremos en la demanda elaborada por el grupo productor al episcopado para que éste asumiera un discurso “populista”, como modo de instaurar discursivamente una identidad social configurada, simultáneamente, por la experiencia del peronismo en la Argentina y la renovación eclesiológica del Concilio Vaticano II. Para ello, argumentamos, los redactores construyeron una representación del pueblo como sujeto político y propusieron una identificación entre el locutor episcopal y el objeto discursivo así construido. Complementariamente, observamos el rechazo sistemático y puntilloso de esta demanda en los “modos” o correcciones realizadas por los obispos en el cuarto borrador. El análisis genético se complementa con un examen de los efectos producidos en ciertos ámbitos de recepción del texto, que nos permitirá observar cómo, a pesar del control episcopal, el efecto de discurso populista llegó a ser percibido por algunos sujetos que rechazaban precisamente esa articulación entre catolicismo posconciliar y peronismo.

El libro es una reedición del artículo extenso, homónimo, publicado en la serie "Informe de Investigación", nº 24. El trabajo analiza la relación entre estrategias discursivas de largo plazo y tácticas coyunturales en el dispositivo discursivo de la Conferencia Episcopal Argentina (CEA) durante la década de 1980. La pregunta general que guió nuestra investigación fue cómo articularon los obispos argentinos un discurso que se pretende atemporal, enraizado en una larga historia de alianzas con diversos gobiernos de facto, con la institucionalización democrática que comenzó en 1983. Observamos conjunto de recursos que permiten explotar al máximo la heterogeneidad propia del discurso católico manteniendo una serie de continuidades que le garantizan una estabilidad institucional y una posición en el espacio político-religioso a partir de la construcción de su discurso colectivo. Así analizamos, en primer lugar, las características jurídicas, sociales y políticas que hacen de la CEA un sujeto colectivo productor de discursos atravesado por estas tensiones. En segundo lugar, damos cuenta del sistema de géneros y la tradición discursiva que constituyen, concluyendo que, no obstante los cambios tácticos sufridos por los primeros, se mantienen estables una serie de funciones estratégicas que son redistribuidas en otras clases textuales. En tercer lugar, nos detenemos en los aspectos enunciativos y polifónicos del discurso colectivo de la CEA, especialmente en aquellos sectores del texto que -a través de diferentes recursos enunciativos, argumentativos y léxicos- permiten leer las huellas de conflictos entre los miembros del episcopado. Las conclusiones sistematizan una serie de regularidades entre estas dimensiones de análisis que nos permiten distinguir, en el marco de una estrategia de mediano plazo, tres articulaciones tácticas, que denominamos de “espiritualización de la política” (1981-1984), de “politización de la espiritualidad” (1984-1987) y “despolitización del discurso espiritual”.

French illustrator Bernard Picart was responsible for the execution, but also for the conception and selection, of the engravings in Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde. This chapter interprets the elaborate orchestration of images, in terms of their subject, size, and sequence within the volumes, as a targeted visual provocation. Picart sought to elicit emotions of sympathy or irritation, of identification or rejection. By challenging the public to recognize the universal aspects of religious ceremonies, the needs they fulfil and dangers they entail, he intended to stimulate a reflection on religion beyond questions of denomination, confession or race.

El libro presenta los resultados de una investigación interdisciplinaria que aborda desde múltiples aspectos el funcionamiento político de la escritura religiosa desde la perspectiva del análisis del discurso. Explora campos de conocimiento de reciente conformación. Por una parte, se vincula con una serie de estudios que, en la última década, analizan el impacto de la dimensión religiosa en las prácticas políticas en América Latina desde la sociología y la historia. Por otra parte, presenta una articulación novedosa entre los métodos lingüísticos de análisis del discurso y la exploración de materiales pre-textuales y borradores de la crítica genética. Al respecto, el libro entabla un diálogo crítico y actualizado con la literatura especializada en estas áreas en el ámbito nacional e internacional.

El texto analiza procesos de producción, circulación y reconocimiento del lenguaje político-religioso en la coyuntura de final de la última dictadura militar y transición a la democracia en Argentina. Para ello analiza el caso de “Iglesia y comunidad nacional” (1981), comprendido como un acontecimiento discursivo que involucró actores provenientes de ciertas redes religiosas que, partiendo de una matriz histórica común, adoptaron opciones político-religiosas específicas vinculadas orgánicamente a la estructura eclesiástica pero sin dejar de participar en experiencias propiamente políticas de la época.

Entre sus principales resultados, en primer lugar, el libro aborda materiales de archivo inéditos y que se consideraban inexistentes, como son los borradores del documento Iglesia y comunidad nacional. El análisis genético del proceso de escritura de dicho texto por parte de un grupo de actores sociales de diversa extracción social y política se trianguló con el análisis de sus trayectorias, reconstruidas a partir de entrevistas en profundidad y bibliografía secundaria. Por último, a partir de un extenso corpus de prensa gráfica de diversa orientación ideológica se analizó la recepción del documento y los diversos usos políticos, a menudo contradictorios, del texto religioso. Al respecto, el libro muestra el impacto del discurso religioso en el ámbito político, no sólo durante el gobierno de la última dictadura militar sino también durante la transición a la democracia. En el último capítulo, desde un punto de vista histórico-lingüístico de análisis léxico, se observa precisamente la presencia del discurso religioso en los ámbitos legislativo y judicial durante los primeros años del gobierno democrático iniciado en diciembre de 1983, marcando una continuidad con las prácticas discursivas previas que puede rastrearse incluso hasta el presente.

Por este motivo, y más allá de la localización histórica de los materiales estudiados, los resultados obtenidos en esta investigación contribuyen a la comprensión de un conjunto de ideas lingüísticas actuales y de las condiciones históricas del discurso político y religioso contemporáneo.

En este trabajo nos proponemos: a) contribuir a la comprensión de los discursos religiosos institucionales a partir del análisis de la producción discursiva de la Conferencia Episcopal Argentina (CEA); b) examinar sus estrategias discursivas en el proceso de transición a la democracia iniciado en diciembre de 1983. Para ello examinamos su sistema de géneros discursivos, concentrándonos en tres que registran una significativa variación cuantitativa: las cartas políticas y las declaraciones, que son los más utilizados entre 1965 y 1983, aunque desaparecen en la etapa abierta en 1984; y los comunicados, que dejan de ser un género marginal para convertirse en el más recurrente en democracia. La pregunta que nos hacemos es: ¿implica esta variación cuantitativa un cambio cualitativo en las estrategias discursivas del episcopado argentino? Para ello comparamos los tres géneros de manera sincrónica y diacrónica en ambos períodos, adoptando la perspectiva de la lingüística del texto alemana. Los resultados del análisis muestran una reorganización del sistema de géneros que responde más a motivos tácticos que estratégicos, puesto que el comunicado absorbe las propiedades clave de las cartas y las declaraciones, adaptando un mismo sistema de creencias a nuevas circunstancias comunicativas, configuradas por la democratización política del país.

Narratology is the contextualized retelling of events whereby the speaker addresses current situations by relating other or past or events, and religious discourse is one of the areas of narratology. This is what concerns this research by highlighting narratology in the speech given by the Pope Francis upon his recent visit to Iraq. Drawing on two models, Barker's (2001) and Chruszczewski's (2003), the researcher applies an overall examination of narratology in the Pope's speech. The research finds that the Pope's speech is full of various narratological elements, including modality, transitivity, indirect speech acts, and several other discourse markers. The Pope was a very good narrator in his speech by mixing current and past events of all life walks into a single text of language and not only a mere religious oration.

El artículo analiza un grupo de estrategias discursivas identificadas en homilías católicas pronunciadas en la iglesia Nuestra Señora Del Carmen de la ciudad de Santa Fe (Argentina). El trabajo busca mostrar el modo en que las homilías despliegan diferentes recursos para la incorporación de la paráfrasis del texto bíblico. Con este objetivo, el análisis parte de una serie de cláusulas con procesos verbales, en las cuales el texto bíblico ocupa el rol de agente. Uno de los objetivos del artículo es demostrar que esta agentivación se inscribe en un campo de fuerzas propio del discurso religioso católico, en el cual las estrategias se encuentran tensionadas por la construcción de efectos de transparencia y de opacidad sobre el propio texto bíblico. En una segunda instancia, el texto presenta una tabla que compara los resultados de las homilías de la iglesia Nuestra Señora Del Carmen con los obtenidos en análisis semejantes sobre otras iglesias de la ciudad. Lo que la tabla muestra es una gradual complejización y opacidad del texto bíblico a medida que la producción de las homilías se desplaza de los sectores céntricos a los periféricos. Finalmente, el artículo propone una hipótesis contextual destinada a explicar este fenómeno relevado.

The changing face of religious discourse: A Multi-modal analysis of televangelists' performance


Televangelism or the use of satellite television/YouTube to preach religion has become one important media phenomenon, inter alia, among Muslim communities in minority contexts such as the United Kingdom and the United States of America (e.g. see Echchaibi, 2011). In a similar way to public figures, televangelists have become media celebrities with hundreds of thousands of fans and followers on YouTube and social media networks. The celebrity status that some televangelists have acquired raises the important question as to what self-presentation strategies televangelists draw upon (e.g. see Goffman 1959), i.e. what identities they present for themselves and what multi-modal features they use to appeal to their audiences.

The aim of this study is to examine the performance of three American Muslim televangelists who have achieved popularity in the West: Yusuf Estes (born 1944), Hamza Yusuf (born 1958) and Baba Ali (born 1975).  The study explores the performance of these televangelists on YouTube, being one important medium for the dissemination of televangelists' programmes.   

Thematically, the study is divided into two main sections. First, I present an explanatory framework for the rise of the phenomenon of televangelism, relating it to the broader dynamics of media power, the rise of e-religion and the emergence of transnational Islam. Then, I move on to examine the performance of the three case studies being examined. 

Using an innovative synergy of visual grammar (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 1996)  and the Discourse Historical Approach (e.g. Wodak, 2001), I explore three main aspects that are central to televangelists' performance: a) the use of discursive strategies (e.g. recurrent topics in televangelists' sermons); b) drama-related features (e.g. dress code) and c) cinema techniques (e.g. close up shots and graphic effects). The data comprises excerpts of televangelists' YouTube sermons, songs integrated in their programmes and users' comments on YouTube.

Using a range of examples, I highlight the changing face of religious discourse. I argue that in a similar way to political entertainment (e.g. Wodak 2009), religion has gone down the route of entertainment.

One contribution of the study is that it turns attention to religious discourse, which has been little examined from a critical  (multi-modal) perspective (e.g. Chilton 2004: xi). Moreover, the study contributes to the growing interdisciplinary research on new media and religion (e.g. Campbell 2010); it provides some insights, from a multi-modal perspective, as to what happens when religion meets new media.

List of references


Campbell, H. A.  (2010) When Religion Meets New Media. London: Routledge

Chilton, P.  (2004) The role of religion In  Analysing Political Discourse: Theory and Practice.  London: Routledge. pp. 173-193.


Echchaibi, N. (2011) 詮rom audio tapes to video blogs: the de-localization of authority in Islam Nations and Nationalism 17, 1, 25-44.

Goffman, E. (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. United States of America: Penguin Books. 

Kress, G. and T. van Leeuwen (1996) Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. Routledge.

Wodak, R. (2001) 禅he Discourse-Historical Approach In Wodak, R. and M. Meyer (Eds.)
Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: SAGE, pp 63-94.

Wodak, R. (2009) The Discourse of Politics in Action: Politics as Usual. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Many languages of West Africa have adopted religious phrases from Arabic. They are used either in the form of direct borrowings (assalamu alaikum) or as their translated versions. The paper investigates the scale of penetrating the lexicon of some main West African languages by adopting religious phrases of Arabic origin and presents a more detailed analysis of their function in the Hausa language. The examples of the so-called Allah expressions contribute to the idea of common culture-linguistic area in West Africa. The available data from Hausa are to demonstrate the process of passing the sacred vocabulary and phraseology of Arabic origin on to the colloquial language and written literature.

Due to the dominating non-human actions in the world, appealing
to rights has become a central concern of all humans. As such,
to bridge the gap between the idea, cultivation, and conventions
of human rights on the one hand and their realistic application on
the other has been of an extreme importance. Therefore, the study
aims at analysing two texts which are highly concerned with the
issue of rights, namely, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
which was adopted and proclaimed in 1948 by the General Assembly
of the United Nations and Treatise on Rights 'Risalat Al-Huquq'
written by Imam Ali Al-Sajjad (p.b.u.h.) a principal figure in Islam
and the fourth imam of Shias in the 7th century. The analysis will
be carried out using an analytical framework of Critical Discourse
Analysis. Specifically speaking, the aims of the study are: investigating
the linguistic structure of the texts selected, exploring them
with respect to four interpretative procedures, and explicating their
ideologies. Consequently, it is hypothesised that the texts selected
although differ as to their linguistic structure, the texts that intertextually
they accord with, the speech acts they employ, and their
ideologies. Such an analysis reveals the linguistic as well as ideological
perspectives in which rights are presented in these two texts.
This, consequently, leads to the identification of power in these
texts which can be mainly achieved by the "ideological workings of
language", as proposed by Fairclough (1989: 2).

The paper examines the use of religious language in the light of Wittgenstein's two philosophies – the logical atomism of the Tractatus and the more complex approach Wittgenstein later adopted and which received its clearest formulation in the Philosophical Investigations. I use Wittgenstein's two philosophies to examine the assertions of religious fundamentalism – which the Oxford English dictionary defines as “a form of a religion, that upholds belief in the strict, literal interpretation of scripture.”  propose to examine to what extent, if at all, it is possible to uphold a belief in the strict, literal interpretation of scripture.

The particular example of Christian fundamentalism I use is taken from Thelyphthora, published between 1780-1 and written by Martin Madan, an English Christian theologian. The reason for using this rather obscure work is not so much becasue I want to examine Madan's specific concerns, but because Madan actually makes some very clear remarks about what he takes the meaning of the language of the Bible to be. He makes explicit, so to speak, his theory of meaning. And in doing that, I think he makes clear what kind of theory of meaning must underpin the idea that we can uphold a belief in the strict, literal interpretation of scripture.

The changing face of religious discourse: A Multi-modal analysis of televangelists' performance


Televangelism or the use of satellite television/YouTube to preach religion has become one important media phenomenon, inter alia, among Muslim communities in minority contexts such as the United Kingdom and the United States of America (e.g. see Echchaibi, 2011). In a similar way to public figures, televangelists have become media celebrities with hundreds of thousands of fans and followers on YouTube and social media networks. The celebrity status that some televangelists have acquired raises the important question as to what self-presentation strategies televangelists draw upon (e.g. see Goffman 1959), i.e. what identities they present for themselves and what multi-modal features they use to appeal to their audiences.

The aim of this study is to examine the performance of three American Muslim televangelists who have achieved popularity in the West: Yusuf Estes (born 1944), Hamza Yusuf (born 1958) and Baba Ali (born 1975).  The study explores the performance of these televangelists on YouTube, being one important medium for the dissemination of televangelists' programmes.   

Thematically, the study is divided into two main sections. First, I present an explanatory framework for the rise of the phenomenon of televangelism, relating it to the broader dynamics of media power, the rise of e-religion and the emergence of transnational Islam. Then, I move on to examine the performance of the three case studies being examined. 

Using an innovative synergy of visual grammar (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 1996)  and the Discourse Historical Approach (e.g. Wodak, 2001), I explore three main aspects that are central to televangelists' performance: a) the use of discursive strategies (e.g. recurrent topics in televangelists' sermons); b) drama-related features (e.g. dress code) and c) cinema techniques (e.g. close up shots and graphic effects). The data comprises excerpts of televangelists' YouTube sermons, songs integrated in their programmes and users' comments on YouTube.

Using a range of examples, I highlight the changing face of religious discourse. I argue that in a similar way to political entertainment (e.g. Wodak 2009), religion has gone down the route of entertainment.

One contribution of the study is that it turns attention to religious discourse, which has been little examined from a critical  (multi-modal) perspective (e.g. Chilton 2004: xi). Moreover, the study contributes to the growing interdisciplinary research on new media and religion (e.g. Campbell 2010); it provides some insights, from a multi-modal perspective, as to what happens when religion meets new media.

List of references


Campbell, H. A.  (2010) When Religion Meets New Media. London: Routledge

Chilton, P.  (2004) The role of religion In  Analysing Political Discourse: Theory and Practice.  London: Routledge. pp. 173-193.


Echchaibi, N. (2011) 詮rom audio tapes to video blogs: the de-localization of authority in Islam Nations and Nationalism 17, 1, 25-44.

Goffman, E. (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. United States of America: Penguin Books. 

Kress, G. and T. van Leeuwen (1996) Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. Routledge.

Wodak, R. (2001) 禅he Discourse-Historical Approach In Wodak, R. and M. Meyer (Eds.)
Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: SAGE, pp 63-94.

Wodak, R. (2009) The Discourse of Politics in Action: Politics as Usual. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

The Romanian language version of the paper Wittgenstein and Religious Discourse, given on 8 November 2014 in Sibiu at the Conference Text Si Discours Religios.

În prezenta lucrare doresc să examinez anumite înțelesuri ale limbajului religios în lumina celor două filosofii ale lui Wittgenstein – atomismul logic al Tractatus-ului și abordul mai complex pe care Wittgenstein l-a  adoptat ulterior și care a fost formulat cel mai clar în Investigațiile Filosofice. 
Aș dori să mă concentrez asupra conceptului de fundamentalism – pe care Dicționarul Englez Oxford îl definește ca „o formă de religie ce afirmă cu tărie existența credinței doar în sensul unei interpretări stricte, ad-litteram a scripturii”.
De asemenea, voi examina conceptul conform căruia fiecare dintre noi, ca persoane fizice, suntem capabili să ne asumăm un crez în sensul unei interpretări stricte, literale a scripturilor.


Exemplul particular de fundamentalism creștin pe care doresc să îl analizez provine din Thelyphthora - o lucrare publicată între anii 1780 – 1781, scrisă de Martin Madan, teolog creștin englez. Motivul pentru care voi recurge la această operă destul de obscură nu este atât studierea problemelor specifice care îl preocupau pe Madan, ci mai degrabă faptul că el avansează câteva observații foarte critice despre ceea ce consideră a fi limbajul Bibliei, explicând în mod clar propria teorie a sensurilor .
Astfel se clarifică în mod obiectiv ce fel de teorie a sensului ar trebui să se afle la temelia ideii care ne permite să ne susținem convingerile religioase în sensul strict al interpretării scripturilor.

The paper examines the discursive practices of religious discourse
constructing devout religious identity that instigates fiery sentiments not
only to rule out law of the state but also to assassinate others in the name of Allah (Hussain, 2018.). The religious discourse analysis is the
framework and methodology of the paper. Religious polemics are categorized on the basis of spirituality present in them in contrast to the
political discourse that constructs the rule of power. For analysis of the
religious discourse on blasphemy case of Aasia Noreen Bibi, five speeches of the prominent religious figures of right and left wing have
been selected and analysed on the basis of intertextuality for authenticity, affective, logic and lexical and syntactic construction to perpetuate the discursive practices in the realization and legitimization of the power of ideology of the actors through language. The paper delimits its scope to the case of Aasia Bibi, and the lives taken in reference to this case, i.e. assassination of the former governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer (Taseer’s Omen: Salman Taseer's assassination shows how entrenched the religious right has become in Pakistan's polity, 2011) and former minister of religious minorities Shahbaz Bhatti. The study focuses on the construction of an accusative, extremist, violent religious discourse employing abusive lexemes by some of the right winged scholars that led extremists to protest country wide and cause damage to the public property on hearing the Supreme Court’s acquittal of Aasia Bibi in October 2018 (Zafar, 2018; Hashim, 2018).

While Elizabeth’s linguistic excellence is widely acknowledged and easily verifiable in her writings, scholars have paid her prayers surprisingly little attention. Yet, the voice of Elisabetta supplex, of the Queen at prayer, is one of the most revealing examples of Elizabeth’s strategic gendering of her self-representation in writing as a political persona. In particular, this essay focuses on a small corpus of four prayers in vernacular attributed to Elizabeth’s authorship, which provide a crucial example of the linguistic and discursive strategies used by the Queen in her construction of a personal authorial voice directly addressing God. An idiolect of piety emerges in dialogue and confrontation with her political role, in what this essay proposes to call a form of “devotional Petrarchism”.

Fatwa discourse is an effective and powerful instrumental in Muslim communities, as it is a source of knowledge, guidance, adaption, and change. Thus, this study aimed at investigating the discourse of fatwas on English as a foreign language (EFL) to reveal how English, accordingly the Muslims' attitudes, was shaped. In doing so, the data, which comprised English and Arabic fatwas, were analyzed utilizing frame analysis. It has been revealed that there were two main ideological overarching frames, (1) an anti-English frame and (2) a pro-English frame. The anti-English frame shaped English through the following sub-frames: 'prerequisite,' 'unArabic,' 'unIslamic,' 'anti-imitation,' and 'consequence/ramification.' On the other hand, the pro-English frame framed English through:  ' prerequisite' and 'admissibility.'

https://journals.iium.edu.my/asiatic/index.php/AJELL/article/view/1838/981

C’est de cette réalité que je pars. Beaucoup plus que la dimension poétique vue comme invention je vais considérer la dimension poétique comme survivance en parallèle avec l’idée que la « religion » est la première tentative spéculative de l’homme, religion qui n’est fondamentalement que production du, dans et par le langage, et donc nécessairement poétique.
Je vais donc choisir d’étudier :
1- Les racines anciennes « indo-européennes » de notre patrimoine poétique et religieux.
2- La dimension poétique des textes fondateurs de nos trois religions sémitiques. Je serai très bref sur ce sujet.
3- La dimension poétique des textes sacrés  ou d’inspiration religieuse du Moyen Âge (Stabat Mater et Rutebeuf)
4- La dimension poétique des textes et œuvres musicales diverses d’inspiration religieuse avec Monteverdi (Les Vêpres à la Vierge) et J.S. Bach (Passion selon Saint Jean)
5- Cela me ramènera nécessairement aux Psaumes de David et aux Evangiles. Nous pourrons alors poser la question de la pérennité et du dépassement de ce patrimoine.
Ma méthode est dictée par une conception linguistique fondamentale construite au cours des années par un commerce intense avec les œuvres et les artistes dans ces domaines culturels et leur mise en abîme avec des cultures non dérivées du creuset sémitique.

Este artículo analiza algunas de las consecuencias semio-políticas de la adopción de un discurso familiar por parte de una institución fuertemente patriarcal como es la Iglesia católica. En este sentido, intentaremos explorar cuál es el modelo de familia que subyace a dicho discurso en orden a explicar algunas de potencialidades y contradicciones que la adopción del discurso familiar tiene para el discurso católico en la Argentina.

En este trabajo presentamos algunos resultados de nuestra investigación doctoral, dedicada al análisis de los procesos de génesis, circulación y recepción del documento del episcopado católico argentino Iglesia y comunidad nacional (1981). Para ello hemos articulado los aportes de dos campos disciplinares: a) la sociología de redes: que nos permitió explorar los actores, grupos e instituciones que participaron tanto en la producción como en la recepción del texto; b) la crítica genética: que nos proveyó de herramientas para dar cuenta del proceso de redacción a partir de la evidencia textual de cinco etapas redaccionales. El problema teórico que abordamos es el de las relaciones entre génesis textual y recepción discursiva. Para ello formulamos un interrogante de tipo práctico: ¿Qué continuidades se puede establecer entre las opciones descartadas durante el proceso de redacción de Iglesia y comunidad nacional y los efectos de reconocimiento producidos en diferentes actores provenientes de redes diversas?

Calls for renewing the religious discourse, which have become part of the Egyptian arena after the events of September 11, 2001, reflect a desire to challenge the threat posed by the Jihadist ideology and the propagation of Islamophobic approaches. Such calls are not only a religious issue. Renewing the religious discourse is perceived by concerned intellectuals and activists as an important issue revolving around Egypt's identity and as a requisite for democracy. However, the transition from declarations to a concrete program that deals with epistemological issues and with empirical problems has yet to occur. Furthermore, liberal calls have been met with criticism, marginalized, and even perceived as apostasy. This article examines the discussion and the initiatives that have come up in the last two decades, maintaining that the failure to renew the religious discourse is due not only to the resistance of conservative elements. Rather, this failure is an inseparable part of the political discourse and its limitations, manifested in the alliance between the regime and the religious establishment, which support each other.

Ein meister las has been regarded an »eigentümliches Gemisch« by scholars who have questioned its authenticity. Those critics who have (in the opinion of the present author, rightly) rehabilitated the poem as part of Walther’s »authentic« corpus have generally overlooked the nonetheless perceptive observations that underlie this critical discomfiture. The present essay reads the poem as the locus of a uniquely Waltherian dialogue between the genres of Spruchdichtung, Minnesang, and the devotional lyric in order to account for the critics’ unanimous perception of it as a »problematic« poem.

Die Literaturwissenschaft hat die Authentizität von Ein meister las mehrfach infrage gestellt und das Gedicht sogar als »eigentümliches Gemisch« abgelehnt. Diejenigen Kritiker, die wiederum die Zuschreibung an Walther (m.E. rechtens) befürworten, sind diesem – trotzdem aufschlussreichen – kritischen Unbehagen jedoch nicht gerecht geworden. Um dieses Unbehagen sowohl zu erörtern als auch zu beheben, wird das allgemein als »problematisch« angesehene Gedicht hier als einzigartiger Waltherischer Dialog zwischen den Gattungen Spruchdichtung, Minnesang und geistlicher Lyrik interpretiert.

El objetivo de este trabajo es establecer algunos de los procedimientos de negociación discursiva empleados en la redacción colectiva de un discurso institucional. Para ello examinamos, a partir de la metodología contrastiva de la crítica genética, los borradores de los "Documentos finales de Medellín" (1968) en orden a establecer, a partir de las sucesivas reescrituras, los mecanismos que permiten negociar la inclusión de voces sectoriales en el texto colectivo. Observamos la presencia de: procedimientos de categorización y discriminación conceptual, procedimientos de mitigación de la agencia, procedimientos enunciativos de borramiento y modalización y procedimientos intertextuales de adición u omisión de referencias. Por último, presentamos los límites de la negociación discursiva: los posicionamientos, es decir, los enunciados con respecto a los cuales los actores no están dispuestos a ceder. Este capítulo de libro completa algunos de los objetivos planteados en nuestra investigación anterior sobre los borradores de los Documentos Finales de Medellín